PS 

LEsaC3 



Carolina Chansons 

DV BOSE HEYWARD and 
HERVEY ALLEN 




Book 't. 7 $? 1 3 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



CAROLINA CHANSONS 
LEGENDS OF THE LOW COUNTRY 



.i^M 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • 3AN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOITBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lm 

TORONTO 



CAROLINA CHANSONS 

LEGENDS OF THE LOW COUNTRY 



BY 
DuBOSE HEYWARD AND HERVEY ALLEN 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1922 

All rights reserved 



1% 

\1^ 



Copyright, 1922 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1922 



Printed in the United States of America 



DEC -6 '22 

C1A692248 



TO JOHN BENNETT 



ACKNO WLED GMENTS 

The thanks of the authors are due to the editors 
of The London Mercury, The North American Review, 
Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, The Reviewer, The Book 
News Monthly, and Contemporary Verse for permis- 
sion to reprint many of the poems in this volume. 

Grateful acknowledgment is also made to many 
friends for first-hand information and for the loan of 
letters, diaries, pictures, and old newspaper clippings. 



Ill 



PREFACE 

IN a continent but recently settled, many parts of 
which have as yet little historical or cultural 
background, the material for this volume has been 
gathered from a section that was one of the first to 
be colonized. Here the Frenchman, Spaniard, and 
Englishman all passed, leaving each his legend; 
and a brilliant and more or less feudal civilization 
with its aristocracy and slaves has departed with 
the economic system upon which it rested. 

From this medley of early colonial discovery and 
romance, from the memories of war and reconstruc- 
tion, it has been as difficult to choose coherently as 
to maintain restraint in selection among the many 
grotesque negro legends and si;perstitions so rich in 
imagery and music. Coupled with this there has 
been another task; that of keeping these legends and 
stories in their natural matrix, the semi-tropical 
landscape of the Low Country, which somehow lends 
them all a pensively melancholy yet fitting back- 
ground. Not to have so portrayed them, would have 
been to sacrifice their essentially local tang. To the 
reader unfamiliar with coastal Carolina, the unique 
aspects of its landscapes may seem exaggerated in 

1:93 



Preface 

these pages; the observant visitor and the native will, 
it is hoped, recognize that neither the colors nor the 
shadows are too strong. These poems, however, are 
not local only, they are stories and pictures of a chapter 
of American history little known, but dramatic and 
colorful, and in the relation of an important part to 
the whole they may carry a decided interest to the 
country at large. 

Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; 
but it is also true that the universal often borders 
on the void. It has been said, perhaps wisely, that 
the immediate future of American Poetry lies rather 
in the intimate feeling of local poets who can interpret 
their own sections to the rest of the country as Robin- 
son and Frost have done so nobly for New England, 
rather than in the effort to yawp universally. Hence 
there is no attempt here to say, "O New York, 
Pennsylvania," but simply, "0 Carolina." 

The South, however, has been ''interpreted" so 
often, either with condescending pity or nauseous 
sentimentality, that it is the aim of this book to 
speak simply and carefully amid a babel of unauthen- 
tic utterance. Nevertheless, the contents of this 
volume do not pretend to exact historical accuracy; 
this is poetry rather than history, although the legends 
and facts upon which it rests have been gathered 
with much painstaking research and careful verifica- 
tion. It should be kept in mind that these poems are 



Preface 

impressionistic attempts to present the fleeting feeling 
of the moment, landscape moods, and the ephemeral 
attitudes of the past. Legends are material to be 
moulded, and not facts to be recorded. Above all 
here is no pretence of propaganda. 

As some of the material touched on is not accessible 
in standard reference, prose notes have been included 
giving the historical facts or background of legend 
upon which a poem has been based. These notes 
together with a bibliography will be found at the 
back of the volume. 

If the only result of this book is to call attention 
to the literary and artistic values inherent in the 
South, and to the essentially unique and yet nationally 
interesting qualities of the Carolina Low Country, 
its landscapes and legends, the labor bestowed here 
will have secured its harvest. 

DuBosE Heyward - Hervey Allen. 

Charleston, S. C. 
December, 192 1. 



ciin 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 9 

Poems 

Seance at Sunrise 17 

Silences 20 

Presences 23 

The Pirates 25 

The Sewees of Sewee Bay 34 

La Fayette Lands 38 

Legend of Theodosia Burr 

The Priest and the Pirate 42 

Palmetto Town 50 

Carolina Spring Song 52 

The First Submarine 

The Last Crew 54 

Landbound 65 

Two Pages from the Book of the Sea Islands 66 

1. SHADOWS 66 

2. SUNSHINE 69 

Negro Poems 

Modern Philosopher 72 

Upstairs-Downstairs 73 

Hag-hollerin' Time 74 

Macabre in Macaws 75 



Contents 

PAGE 

Gamesters All 76 

Eclipse 81 

Poe 

Edgar Allan Poe 83 

Alchemy 86 

Osceola 88 

Ashley River Gardens 

Magnolia Gardens 89 

Middleton Garden 92 

Cooper River Legends 

The Goose Creek Voice 95 

The Leaping Poll 98 

The Blockade Runner loi 

Beyond Debate iii 

Marsh Tackles 112 

Back River 114 

Dusk 117 

Prose Notes and Bibliography 

On the Chimes 121 

On the Pirates 122 

On the Sewee Indians 124 

On La Fayette 125 

On Theodosia Burr 126 

On "The Last Crew" 127 

On Edgar Allan Poe 128 

On "Marsh Tackles" 130 

Bibliography 131 

D43 



CAROLINA CHANSONS 
LEGENDS OF THE LOW COUNTRY 



SEANCE AT SUNRISE ] 

i 

PLACE the new hands * 

In the old hands j 

Of the old generation, i 

And let us tilt tables ' 

In the hierh room 

... \ 

Of our imagination. I 

Let the thick veil glow thin, 

At sunrise — at sunrise — , 

Let the strange eyes peer in, I 

The red, the black, and the white faces 1 

Of the still living dead ' 

Of the three races. 

Let a quaint voice begin : 

Voice of an Indian \ 

" Gone from the land, 

We leave the music of our names, \ 

As pleasant as the sound of waters; \ 

Gone is the log-lodge and the skin tepee, 

And moons ago the ghost-canoe brought home ; 

The latest of our sons and daughters — j 

Yet still we linger in tobacco smoke ! 

n 17 3 



Carolina Chansons 

And in the rustling fields of maize; 

Faint are the tracks our moccasins have left, 

But they are there, down all your ways.'' 

Voice of a Slave 
''We do not talk 
Of hours in the rice 
When days were long, 
Nor of old masters 
Who are with us here 
Beyond all right or wrong. 
Only white afternoons come back, 
When in the fields 
We reached the Mercy Seat 
On wings of song." 

Voice of a Planter 
''Nothing moves there but the night wind. 
Blowing the mosses like smoke ; 
All would be silent as moonlight 
But for the owl in the oak — 
Stairways that lead up to nothing — 
Windows like terrible scars — 
Snakes on a log in the cistern 
Peering at stars ..." 

Spirit of Prophecy 
"Dawn with its childish colors 

ni83 



Seance at Sunrise 

Stipples the solemn vault of night; 

Behind the horizon the sun shakes a bloody fist; 

Mysteries stand naked by the lakes of mist; 

Spirits take flight, 

The medicine man, 

The voodoo doctor — 

Witches mount brooms. 

The day looms. 

Faster it comes. 

Bringing young giants 

Who hate solitude, 

And march with drums — 

Beat — beat — beat, 

Down every ancient street, 

The young giants! Minded like boys: 

Action for action's sake they love 

And noise for noise." 

Voice of a Poet 
''The fire of the sunset 
Is remembered at midnight, 
But forgotten at dawn. |;^ 
While the old stars set,| j|i 
Let us speak of their glory 
Before they are gone." 

H. A. 



Ciq] 



SILENCES * 

You who have known my city for a day 
And heard the music of her steepled bells, 
Then laughed, and passed along your vagrant way, 
Carrying only what the city tells 
To those who listen solely with their ears; 
You know St. Matthew's swinging harmonies, 
And old St. Michael's tale of golden years 
Far less like bells than chanted memories. 

Yet there is something wanting in the song 

Of lyric youth with voice unschooled by pain. 

And there are breathing stillnesses that throng 

Dim corners, and that only stir again 

When bells are dumb. Not even bronze that beats 

Our heart-throbs back can tell of old defeats. 

But you who take the city for your own. 
Come with me when the night flows deep and kind 
Along these narrow ways of troubled stone, 
And floods the wide savannas of the mind 
With tides that cool the fever of the day: 

* See the note on the chimes at back of book. 



Silences 

One with the dark, companioned by the stars, 
We'll seek St. Philip's, nebulous and gray, 
Holding its throbbing beacon to the bars, 
A prisoned spirit vibrant in the stone 
That knew its empire of forgotten things. 
Then will the city know you for her own. 
And feel you meet to share her sufferings; 
While down a swirl of poignant memories, 
Herself shall find you in her silences. 

Once coaches waited row on shining row 
Before this door; and where the thirsty street 
Drank the deep shadow of the portico 
The Sunday hush was stirred by happy feet. 
Low greetings, and the rustle of brocade, 
The organ throb, and warmth of sunny eyes 
That flashed and smiled beneath a bonnet shade; 
Life with the lure of all its swift disguise. 

Then from the soaring lyric of the spire. 

Like the composite voice of all the town. 

The bells burst swiftly into singing fire 

That wrapped the building, and which showered down 

Bright cadences to flash along the ways 

Loud with the splendid gladness of the days. 

War took the city, and the laughter died 
From lips that pain had kissed. One after one 

1:213 



Carolina Chansons 

All lovely things went down the sanguine tide, 

While death made moaning answer to the gun. 

Then, as a golden voice dies in the throat 

Of one who lives, but whose glad heart is dead, 

The bells were taken; and a sterner note 

Rang from their bronze where Lee and Jackson led. 

The rhythmic seasons chill and burn and chill. 
Cooling old angers, warming hearts again. 
The ancient building quickens to the thrill 
Of lilting feet; but only singing rain 
Flutters old echoes in the portico; 
Those who can still remember love it so. 

D. H. 



1:22] 



PRESENCES 

DESPISE the garish presences that flaunt 
The obvious possession of today, 
To wear with me the spectacles that haunt 
The optic sense with wraiths of yesterday — 
These cobbled shores through which the traffic streams 
Have been the stage-set of successive towns, 
Where coffined actors postured out their dreams, 
And harlot Folly changed her thousand gowns. 
This corner-shop was Bull's Head Tavern, 
When names now dead on marble lived in clay; 
Its rooms were like a sanded cavern. 
Where candles made a sallow jest of day, 
And drovers' boots came grinding like a quern. 
While merchants drank their steaming cups of 'Hay." 

Here pock-marked Black Beard covenanted Bonnet 
To slit the Dons' throats at St. Augustine, 
And bussed light ladies, unknown to this sonnet, 
Whose names, no doubt, would rime with Magdalene. 
And English parsons, who had lost their fames, 
Sat tippling wine as spicy as their joke. 
Larding bald texts with bets on cocking mains. 
And whiffing pipes churchwardens used to smoke. 
Here macaronis, hands a-droop with laces, 

l2s2 



Carolina Chansons 

Dealt knave to knave in picquet or ecarte, 
In coats no whit less scarlet than their faces, 
While bullies hiccuped healths to King and Party, 
And Yankee slavers, in from Barbadoes, 
Drove flinty bargains with keen Huguenots. 

Then Meeting Street first knew St. Michael's steeple, 
When redcoats marched with royal drums a-banging. 
Or merchants stopped gowned tutors to inquire 
Why school let out to see a pirate hanging; 
And gentlemen took supper in the street, 
When candle-shine from tables guled the dark. 
While others passing by would be discreet 
And take the farther side without remark, 
Pausing perhaps to snuff the balmy savor 
Of turtle-soup mulled with the bay-leaves' flavor: 
These walls beheld them, and these lingering trees 
That still preempt the middle of the gutter ; 
They are the backdrops for old comedies — 
If leaves were tongues — what stories they might utter ! 

H. A. 



1:24] 



THE PIRATES * 

I STOOD once where these rows of deep piazzas 
Frown on the harbor from their columned pride, 
And saw the gallant youngest of the cities 
Lift from the jealous many-fingered tide. 
Flanked by the multi-colored sweeping marshes, 
Among the little hummocks choked with thorn, 
I saw the first, small, dauntless row of buildings 
Give back the rose and orange of the dawn. 
Above them swayed the shining green palmettoes 
Vocal and plaintive at the winds' caress ; 
While, at the edge of sight, the fluent silver 
Of sea and bay framed the wide loneliness. 

Out of the East came gaunt razees of commerce 
Troubling the dappled azure of the seas; 
While sleeping marsh awoke, and vanished under 
The thrusting open fingers of the quays. 

Ever, and more, came ships, while others followed. 
Feeling their way among unsounded bars. 
Heaping their freights upon the groaning wharf -heads. 
Filling their holds with turpentines and tars, 

* See the note on the pirates. 



Carolina Chansons 

Until the little twisting streets all vanished 
Into a blur of interwoven spars. 

II 

One with the rest, I saw the commerce dwindle, 

High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main 

And leave us, with the morning in their faces, 

Never to come to any port again. 

Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence 

Grew deep upon the wharves where ships had lain. 

Laughter rang hollow in those days of waiting. 
And nameless fears came drifting down the night. 
The tides swung in from sea, hung, and retreated, 
Bearing their secrets back beyond our sight; 
Till, like the sudden rending of a curtain. 
The East reeled with the lightnings of a fight. 

Never was a night so long with waiting. 

Never was the dark more prone to stay. 

And, in the whispering gloom, taut, listening faces 

Hung in a pallid line along the bay. 

Slowly at last the mists dissolved, revealing 

A fearful silhouette against the day. 

Blue on a saffron dawn, a frigate lifted 
Out of the fog that veiled her fold on fold, 



The Pirates 

Taking the early sunlight on her cannon 
In running spurts and rings of molten gold ; 
No flag of any nation at her masthead. 
Small wonder that our pulses fluttered cold. 

Never a shot she fired on the city, 
But, when the night came blowing in from sea, 
And our ruddy windows warmed the darkness. 
Through the surrounding gloom we heard the free 
Strong sweep and clank of rowing in the harbor, 
And on the wharves raw jest and revelry. 

She was the first, but many others followed; 

Insolent, keen, and swift to come-about, 

I have seen them go smashing down the harbor, 

Loud with the boom of canvas and the shout 

Of lusty voices at the crowded bulwarks. 

Where tattooed hands were swinging long-boats out. 

Up through the streets the roisterers would swagger, 
Filling the narrow ways from wall to wall. 
Scattering gold like ringing summer showers, 
Ready with song and jest and cheery call 
For those who passed; buying the little taverns 
At any cost; opening wine for all. 

There were rare evenings when we used to gather 
Down in a coffee-house beside the square. 

C273 



Carolina Chansons 

Morgan knew well our little favored comer; 
Black Beard the sinister was often there; 
And we have watched the night blur into morning 
While Bonnet, quiet-voiced and debonnaire, 

Would throw the glamor of the seas about us 
In archipelagoes of mad romance; 
Pointing a story with a line from Shakespeare, 
Quoting a Latin proverb; while his glance, 
Flashing across the eager, listening circle. 
Fettered — blinded^ — held us in a trance. 

Their bags of Spanish gold bribed our juries. 
Bought dignified officials of the Crown; 
Money and wine were ours for the asking; 
The Orient flamed out in shawl and gown, 
Until a sudden and unholy splendor 
Irradiated all the quiet town. 

Those were the days when there was open gaming, 

And roaring song in tongue of every race. 

Evil, as colorful as poison weeds, 

Bloomed in the market place. 

And those who should have known, shared in the revels, 

And passed their neighbors with averted face. 

Until one day a frigate entered harbor. 
And passed the city, with a Spanish prize. 



The Pirates 

Then insolently came-about, despoiled her, 
And fired her before our very eyes, 
While the vagrant breezes left the streaming vapor 
Like red rust on the clean steel of the skies. 

Ill 

All in the sullied hours, 
While the pirates stood away 
Out of the murk and horror 
In a sheer white burst of spray, 

Leaving the wreck to settle 
Under its winding sheet, 
I felt the city shudder 
And stir beneath my feet. 

Thrilling against the morning, 
As audible as song, 
I heard the city waken 
Out of her night of wrong. 

That was a day to cherish 
When Rhett and a gallant few 
Sunamoned the best among us; 
Called for a daring crew. 

New and raw at the business, 
To the smithy's roar and clang, 



Carolina Chansons 

We drove our aching muscles 
And as we worked we sang, 

Until one blowing morning 
With summer on the sea, 
The Henry to the windward, 
The Sea Nymph down alee, 

Flecking the wide Atlantic 

With a flaring, lacy track, 

We went, as glad as the winds are glad, 

To buy our honor back. 

IV 

Over the wooded shore-line. 
Where the hidden rivers stray 
Down to the sea like timid girls, 
I saw in the first faint gray 

A burst of cloudy topsails 

Go blowing swiftly by. 

With the stars aswirl behind them 

Like bright dust down the sky. 

Gone were the days of waiting. 
And the long, blind search was gone; 
With a cheer we swung to meet them 
On the forefoot of the dawn. 



The Pirates i 

I 

Out of the screening woodland J 

Into the open sound ' 

The frigate crashed, then staggered 

Careening, fast aground. ! 

j 
■] 

White water tugged behind us, j 

We felt the Henry reel j 
And spin as the hard impartial sand 

Closed on her vibrant keel. i 



All through the high white morning. 
While the lagging tide crawled out, 
Fate held us bound and waiting, 
While, turn and turn about, 

We manned the fuming cannon 

And bartered hell for hell, 

While the scuppers sang with coursing life 

Where the dead and dying fell. 

Till, like the break of fever 
When life thrills up through pain. 
We felt the current stirring 
Under the keel again. 

Then it was hand to cutlass, 
And pistols in the sash. 
''All hands stand by for boarding, — 
Now, close abeam and lash!" 



Carolina Chansons 

But the ensign that had mocked us 
With its symbol of the dead 
Fluttered and dropped to the bloody deck, 
And a white square spoke instead. 

Home from the kill we thundered 
On the tail of the equinox, 
To the thrum of straining canvas, 
And the whine and groan of blocks. 

Leaping clear of the shallows. 
Chancing the creaming bars, 
We heard the first faint cheering 
As the late sun limned our spars. 

Safe in the lee of the city 
We moored in the afterglow, 
The Sea Nymph and the Henry 
With the buccaneers in tow. 

Glad we had been in the going, 
But God! it was good to come 
Out of the sky-wide loneliness 
To the walls and lights of home. 

V 

Under these shouldering rows of stone 
That notch the quiet sky; 
1:323 



The Pirates 

Under the asphalt's transient seal 
The same old mud-flats lie; 
And I have felt them surge and lift 
At night as I passed by. 

Yes, I have seen them sprawling nude 

While an Autumn moon hung chill, 

And the tide came shuddering in from sea, 

Lift by lift, until 

It held them under a silver mesh. 

Responsive to its will. 

Then slowly out from the crowding walls 

I have seen the gibbets grow, 

And stand against the empty sky 

In a desolate, windblown row. 

While their dancers swayed, and turned, and spun, 

Tripping it heel and toe; 

With a flash of gold where the peering moon 
Saw an earring as it swung. 
And a silver line that leapt and died 
Where the salt-white sea-boots hung. 
And the pitiful, nodding, silent heads. 
With half of their songs unsung. 

D. H. 



C33II 



THE SEWEES OF SEWEE BAY * 

^^And these squaws, waiting in vain the return of their husbands^ 
sought out braves among the other tribes, and so men say the- Sewees 
have become Wandos^ 

i<- y^NE flask of rum for fifty muskrat skins! 

\_J A horn of powder for a bear's is not enough; 
A whole winter's hunting for some blanket stuff — 
Ugh!" said the Sewee Chief, 
"The pale-face is a thief!" 

Ever, from the north-north-east, 

The great winged canoes 

Swept landward from the shining water 

Into Bull's Bay, 

Where the poor Sewees trapped the otter, 

Or took the giant oysters for their feast — 

Ever the ships came from the north and east. 

Surely, at morning, when they walked the beaches, 
Over the smoky-silver, whispering reaches. 
Where the ships came from, loomed a land. 
Far-off, one mountain- top, away 
Where the great camp-fire sun made day : 

* See the note at the back of the book. 
C343 



The Sewees of Sewee Bay 

"There are the pale-face lodges," they would say. 

So all one winter 

Was great hunting on that shore; 

Much maize was pounded, 

And of acorn oil great store 

Was tried; 

And coUops of smoked deer meat set aside, 

And skins and furs, 

And furs and skins. 

And bales of furs beside. 

And all that winter, too. 

The smoke eddied 

From many a huge canoe, 

Hollowed by flame from cypress trees 

That with stone ax and fire 

The Sewee shaped to the good shape 

Of his desire. 



So when next spring 
The traders came from Charles Town, 
Bringing a gift of blankets from the king, 
The Sewees would not trade a pelt — 
Saying, ''We go to see 
The Great White Father in his own tepee- 
Heap, heap much rum!" 
And then they passed the pipe of peace, 
And puffed it, and looked glum. 



Carolina Chansons 

The traders thought the redskins must be daft; 

They saw the huge canoes, 

And, wondering at their use, 

Asked, ''What will you do with these?" 

And the chief pointed east across the seas ; 

And then the pale-face laughed. 

And yet — 

There was a story told 

By one of Black Beard's men 

Who had done evil things for gold. 

That one morning, out at sea, 

The fog made a sudden lift, 

And from the high poop, looking through the rift, 

He saw 

Twenty canoes, each with six warriors, 

PaddHng straight toward the rising sun, 

Where the wind made a flaw — 

He swore he saw 

And counted twenty hulls. 

Circled about by screaming gulls — 

Then such a storm came down 

That some prayed on that hellion ship, 

But he did not — 

He was not born to drown. 

This was the tale 

Told with much bluster, 

C363 



The Sewees of Sewee Bay 

Over ale 

And oaths, 

At Charles Town. 

He swore he saw the Indians in the dawn, 

And he^d he danged! 

And by Chris fs Mother — 

Take his rings in pawn! 

But he was hanged 

With poor Stede Bonnet, later on. 

H. A. 



C373 



LA FAYETTE LANDS * 

THAT evening, gathered on the vessel's poop, 
They saw the glimmering land, 
And far lights moved there. 
As once Columbus saw them, winking, strange; 
Around the ship two darkies in a small canoe 
Paddled and grinned, and held up silver fish. 

Over the high ship's tumble-home 

A pinnace slid. 

Slow, lowered from the squealing davit-ropes. 

And from a port a-square with lantern light. 

The little, leather trunks were passed, 

Ironbound and quaint; while down the vessel's side 

With voluble advice, hon voyage and au revoir, 

The chatting Frenchmen came — 

Click-clap of rapiers cKpping on hard boots. 

Cocked hats and merry eyes. 

The great ship backs its yards, 

With drooping sails, await, 

A spider-web of spars and lantern-lights, 

While like a pilot shark, the slim canoe, 

* See the note at the back of the book. 



La Fayette Lands 

A V-shaped ripple wrinkKng from its jaws, 

Slides noiselessly across the swells, 

Leading the swinging boat's crew to the beach; 

And all the world slides up — 

And then the stars slide down — 

As ocean breathes; while evening falls, 

And destiny is being rowed ashore. 

The twilight-muffled bells of town, the bark of 

dogs, 
The distant shouts, and smell of burning wood. 
Fall graciously upon their sea-tired sense. 
Wide-trousered, barefoot sailors carry them to land, 
Tho' snake- voiced waves flaunt frothing up the 

beach ; 
The horse-hide trunks are pfled upon a dune; 
And there a Httle Frenchman takes his stand, 
Hawk-faced and ardent. 
While his brown cloak droops about him 
Like young falcon plumes. 

Gray beach, gray twilight, and gray sea — 
How strange the scrub palmettoes down the coast! 
No purple-castled heights, like dear Auvergne, 
Against the background of the Puy de Dome, 
But land as level as the sea, a sandy road 
That twists through myrtle thickets 
Where the black boys lead. 

C393 



Carolina Chansons 

Far down a moss-draped avenue of oaks 

There is a flash of torches, and the lights 

Go flitting past the bottle panes; 

A cracked plantation bell dull-clangs; 

The beagles bay, 

Black faces swarm, with ivory eyeballs glazed — 

Court dwarfs that served thick chocolate, on their knees 

In damasked, perfumed rooms at grand Versailles, 

Were all the blacks the French had ever seen. 

Major Huger, lace-rufiled shirt, knee-breeks, 
A saddle-pistol in his hand. 
Waits on the terrace. 

Ready for "hospitality " to British privateers; 
But now no London accent takes his ears. 
No EngHsh bow so low, "Good evening, sair; 
I am de la Fayette, and these, monsieur, 
My friends, and this, le Baron Kalb." 

Welcome's the custom of the time and land — 

And these are noblemen of France ! 

Now is Bartholomew for turkeycocks, 

Old wines decant, the chandeliers flare up, 

The slave row brims with lights; 

And horses gallop off to summon guests. 

After the ship — how good the spacious rooms ! 
How strange mosquito canopies on beds ! 



La Fayette Lands 

Knights of St. Louis sniff the frying yams, 

Venison, and turtle, — 

The old green turtle died tonight — 

The children's eyes grow wider on the stairs. 

Down in the library, 

The Marquis, writing back to old Auvergne, 

Has sanded down the ink; 

Again the quill pen squeaks : 

''A ship will sail tomorrow back to France, 

By special providence for you, dear wife; 

Tonight there will be toasts to Washington, 

To our good Louis and his Antoinette — 

There will be toasts tonight for la Fayette. . . 

He melts the wax; 

Look, how the candle gutters at the flame! 

And now he seals the letter with his ring. 



H. A. 



1:413 



THE PRIEST AND THE PIRATE * 

A BALLAD OF THEODOSIA BURR 

AND must the old priest wake with fright 
L Because the wind is high tonight? 
Because the yellow moonlight dead 
Lies silent as a word unsaid — 
What dreams had he upon his bed? 

Listen — the storm! 

The winter moon scuds high and bare; 
Her light is old upon his hair; 
The gray priest muses in a prayer: 

'' Christ Jesus, when I come to die 

Grant me a clean, sweet, summer sky, 

Without the mad wind's panther cry. 

Send me a little garden breeze 

To gossip in magnolia trees; 

For I have heard, these fifty years, 

Confessions muttered at my ears, 

Till every mumble of the wind 

Is like tired voices that have sinned, 

* See the note at the back of the book. 



The Priest and the Pirate 

And furtive skirling of the leaves 
Like feet about the priest-house eaves, 
And moans seem like the unforgiven 
That mutter at the gate of heaven, 
Ghosts from the sea that passed unshriven. 

And it was just this time of night 
There came a boy with lantern light 
And he was linen-pale with fright; 
It was not hard to guess my task. 
Although I raised the sash to ask — 
^Oh, Father,' cried the boy, 'Oh, come! 
Quickly with the viaticum! 
The sailor-man is going to die ! ' 
The thirsty silence drank his cry. 
A starless stillness damped the air, 
While his shrill voice kept piping there, 
*The sailor-man is going to die ' — 
The huge drops splattered from the sky. 

I shivered at my midnight toil, 
But took the elements and oil. 
And hurried down into the street 
That barked and clamored at our feet — 
And as we ran there came a hum 
Of round shot sHthered on a drum. 
While like a Hd of sound shut down 
The thunder-cloud upon the town; 
C43 3 



Carolina Chansons 

Jalousies banged and loose roofs slammed, 
Like hornbooks fluttered by the damned; 
And like a drover's whip the rain 
Cracked in the driving hurricane. 

Only the lightning showed the door 
That like two cats we darted for; 
It almost gave a man a qualm 
To find the house inside so calm. 

I sloshed all dripping up the stair, 

Up to an attic room a-glare 

With candle-shine and lightning-flare — 

With little draughts that moved its hair 

A wrinkled mummy sat a-stare. 

Rigid, huddling in a chair. 

I thought at first the thing was dead 

Until the eyes slid in its head. 

It seemed as if the Banshee storm 
Knocked screaming for his withered form; 
It shrieked and whistled like a parrot. 
Clucking and stuttering through the garret. 
With-out, the mailed hands of hail 
Battered the casements, and the gale 
About his low roof shuddered, sighing, 
As if it knew that he was dying. 
1:443 



The Priest and the Pirate 

It breathed like waiting beasts outside, 
While soft feet made the shingles slide. 

Then, like a blow upon the cheek, 
The mummy's voice began to speak: 

^Give me a priest! Fm going to die!^ 
The Banshee wind took up the cry : 
'Give him a priest, he's going to die!' 
The old house seemed to rock with laughter, 
Shaking its sides and every rafter. 

There was a terror in that room 

Like faint light streaming from a tomb. 

I tried three times before I spoke. 

And then the bald words made me choke : 

'Be quiet, man, for I am come 

To bring you the viaticum! ' — 

I made the sign of holiness. 

He rattled out a startled cry. 

I whispered low, ' Confess, confess ! ' 

His thin hands quivered with distress. 

It is a bitter thing to die. 

Just when a blast fell on the town, 
I felt his lean claws clutch me down. 
It seemed as if the hands of death 
Were beating at my breast for breath; 

n4S3 



Carolina Chansons 

His arms were like a twisted rope 
Of rotten strands that tugged at hope. 
^Listen, my father^ listen well!' 
The wind went tolling like a bell : 

^ She's lying fifty fathoms deep, 
Where fishes like white birds go by 
Through water-air in ocean-land; 
She has a prayer-book in her hand — 
Tonight she walks; tonight she spoke; 
Her hair goes floating out and up, 
Blown one way, with the water weeds, 
Always one way, like amber smoke. 

She asks the gift she gave to me — 

This ring — / cannot get it of! ' 

His hand and hand fought like two claws- 

'/ hear her calling from the sea!' 

His terror made my own heart pause. 

His voice went moaning with the wind, 
And groaned and rattled, '/ have sinned,' 
And moaned and murmured at my ear 
Of bat-winged angels standing near. 

^The little schooner ^^ Patriot" — 
/ can't forget the vessel's name; 
[46 3 



The Priest and the Pirate 

We met her rounding Naggs Head Bank; 
We made her people walk the plank ^ 
Twelve men whose faces I forgot. 

But there was one sweet lady there, 
With lovely eyes and lovely hair, 
Whose face has stayed like pain and care. 
For every man she made a prayer; 
And when the last had found the sea, 
I cried to her to pray for me. 

She prayed — and took this ring, and said: 

"Wear this for me when I am dead.^^ 

She bowed her head, then steadfastly 

She walked into the hungry sea. 

But silent words were on her lips. 

And there was comfort in her hand; 

It was as if she walked a bridge 

That led into a pleasant land. 

All that was long and long ago, 

So long ago this ring has grown 

To be a very part of me, 

One with my finger and the bone:^ 

His voice went trailing in a moan. 

' This is her ring — 
This is her ring! 

1:473 



Carolina Chansons 

I dare not die and wear the thing T 
His hand plucked at his finger thin 
As if to ease him of his sin. 
I gave a sudden gasping shout — 
The wind that blew the window in 
Had blown the candle out. 

* Quick, father, quick! 

The ring . . . her name . . . ' 

There came a jagged spurt of flame; 

The window seemed a furnace door 

That gave upon a bed of ore; 

The thunder rumbled out the muttered 

Words that his failing tongue had uttered- 

Another flash, a rending crack — 

The old man crumpled like a sack; 

I felt his stringy arms go slack. 

How could he sit so dead, so still! 

While wind snouts snuffed along the sill? 

White shone his glimmering face, and dull 
The sodden silence of the lull. 
For when he died the wind had dropt; 
And with his heart the storm had stopt, 
All but a far-off mouthing sound 
That seemed to sough from underground; 
While silence paused to plan some ill, 
Thwarted by thunder growling still. 

1:483 



The Priest and the Pirate 

All in the darkness of the place 

With lightning playing on its face, 

I fumbled with the corpse's ring 

To which the dead hands seemed to cling; 

The stiffening joints were loth to play — 

After awhile it came away ! 

Out, like a sneak-thief through the gloom, 
I tiptoed from the dead man's room; 
The door behind me like a hatch 
Banged — the white splash of my match 
Made shadow shapes dance on the wall 
As if the devil pulled the string. 
The light ran melting round the ring; 
Inside the worn script scrawled a-blur: 

'J. A. to Theodosia Burr ' 
Confession is a sacred thing ! 
I'll keep his secret like the sea; 
The ring goes to the grave with me." 

H. A. 



C493 



PALMETTO TOWN 

SEA-ISLAND winds sweep through Palmetto Town, 
Bringing with piney tang the old romance 
Of Pirates and of smuggling gentlemen; 
And tongues as languorous as southern France 
Flow down her streets like water- talk at fords ; 
While through iron gates where pickaninnies sprawl, 
The sound floats back, in rippled banjo chords, 
From lush magnolia shade where mockers call. 
Mornings, the flower-women hawk their wares — 
Bronze caryatids of a genial race, 
Bearing the bloom-heaped baskets on their heads; 
Lithe, with their arms akimbo in wide grace. 
Their jasmine nods jestingly at cares — 
Turbaned they are, deep-chested, straight and tall. 
Bandying old English words now seldom heard, 
But sweet as Provengial. 
Dreams peer like prisoners through her harp-like 

gates, 
From molten gardens mottled with gray-gloom, 
Where lichened sundials shadow ancient dates, 
And deep piazzas loom. 

Fringing her quays are frayed palmetto posts. 
Where clipper ships once moored along the ways, 

CsoD 



Palmetto Town 

And fanlight doorways, sunstruck with old ghosts, 
Sicken with loves of her lost yesterdays. 
Often I halt upon some gabled walk, 
Thinking I see the ear-ringed picaroons j 
Slashed with a sash or Spanish folderols, 
Gambling for moidores or for gold doubloons. 
But they have gone where night goes after day, 
And the old streets are gay with whistled tunes, 
Bright with the lilt of scarlet parasols, 
Carried by honey-voiced young octoroons. 

H. A. 



nsi] 



CAROLINA SPRING SONG 

AGAINST the swart magnolias' sheen 
1\. Pronged maples, like a stag's new horn, 
Stand gouted red upon the green, 
In March when shaggy buds are shorn. 

Then all a mist-streaked, sunny day 
The long sea-islands lean to hear 
A water harp that shallows play 
To lull the beaches' fluted ear. 

When this same music wakes the gift 
Of pregnant beauty in the sod. 
And makes the uneasy vultures shift 
Like evil things afraid of God, 

Then, then it is I love to drift 
Upon the flood-tide's lazy swirls. 
While from the level rice fields lift 
The spiritu'ls of darky girls. 

I hear them singing in the fields 
Like voices from the long-ago; 
They speak to me of somber worlds 
And sorrows that the humble know; 

ns23 



Carolina Spring Song 

Of sorrow — yet their tones release 
A harmony of larger hours 
From easy epochs long at peace 
Amid an irony of flowers. 

So if they sometimes seem a choir 
That cast a chill of doubt on spring, 
They have still higher notes of fire 
Like cardinals upon the wing. 

H. A. 



C533 



THE LAST CREW* 



SPRING found us early that eventful year, 
Seeming to know in her clairvoyant way 
The bitterness of hunger and despair 
That lay upon the town. 
Out of the sheer 
Thin altitudes of day 
She drifted down 
Over the grim blockade 
At the harbor mouth, 
Trailing her beauty over the decay 
That war had made. 

Gilding old ruins with her jasmine spray, 
Distilling warm moist perfume 
From chill winter shade. 

Out of the south 
She brought the whisperings 
Of questing wings. 
Then, flame on flame, 
The cardinals came. 
Blowing like driven brands 

* See the note at the back of the book. 



The Last Crew 

Up from the sultry lands 

Where Summer's happy fires always burn. 

Old silences, that pain 

Had held too close and long, 

Stirred to the mocker's song. 

And hope looked out again 

From tired eyes. 

Down where the White Point Gardens drank the sun, 

And rippled to the lift of springing grass, 

The women came; 

And after them the aged, and the lame 

That war had hurled back at them like a taunt. 

And always, as they talked of little things. 

How violets were purpling the shade 

More early than in all remembered Springs, 

And how the tides seemed higher than last year, 

Their gaze went drifting out across the bay 

To where. 

Thrusting out of the mists, 

Like hostile fists, 

Waited the close blockade — 

Then, dim to left and right. 

The curving islands with their shattered mounds 

That had been forts; 

Mounds, which in spite 

Of four long years of rending agony 

Still held against the light; 

C553 



Carolina Chansons 

Faint wraiths of color 

For the breeze to lift 

And flatten into faded red and white. 

These sunny islands were not meant for wars; 

See, how they curve away 

Before the bay, , 

Bidding the voyager pause. 

Warm with the hoarded suns of centuries, 

Young with the garnered youth of many Springs, 

They laugh like happy bathers, while the seas 

Break in their open arms. 

And the slow-moving breeze 

Draws languid fingers down their placid brows. 

Even the surly ocean knows their charms. 

And under the shrill laughter of the surf. 

He booms and sings his heavy monotone. 

II 

There are rare nights among these waterways 

When Spring first treads the meadows of the marsh, 

Leaving faint footprints of elusive green 

To glimmer as she strays. 

Breaking the Winter silence with the harsh 

Sharp call of waterfowl; 

Rubbing dim shifting pastels in the scene 

With white of moon 

CS6] 



The Last Crew 

And blur of scudding cloud, 

Until the myrtle thickets 

And the sand, 

The silent streams, 

And the substantial land 

Go drifting down the tide of night 

Aswoon. 

On such a night as this 

I saw the last crew go 

Out of a world too beautiful to leave. 

Only a chosen few 

Beside the crew 

Were gathered on the pier; 

And in the ebb and flow 

Of dark and moon, we saw them fare 

Straight past the row of coffins 

Where the fifth crew lay 

Waiting their last short voyage 

Across the bay. 

And, as they went, not one among them swerved, 

But eyes went homing swiftly to the West, 

Where, faint and very few. 

The windows of the town called out to them 

Yet held them nerved 

And ready for the test. 

Young every one, they brought life at its best. 



Carolina Chansons 

In the taut stillness, not a word 

Was uttered, but one heard 

The deep slow orchestration of the night 

Swell and relapse; as swiftly, one by one, 

Cutting a silhouette against the gray, 

They rose, then dropped out softly like a dream 

Into the rocking shadows of the stream. 

A sudden grind of metal scarred the hush; 

A marsh-hen threshed the water with her wings. 

And, for a breath, the marsh life woke and throbbed. 

Then, down beneath our feet, we caught the gleam 

Of folded water flaring left and right, 

While, with a noiseless rush, 

A shadow darker than the rest 

Drew from its fellows swarming round the quay. 

Took an oncoming breaker. 

Shook its shoulders free. 

And faced the sea. 

Then came an interval that seemed to be 

Part of eternity. 

Years might have passed, or seconds; 

No one knew ! 

Close in the dark we huddled, each to each. 

Too stirred for speech. 

Our senses, sharpened to an agony. 

Drew out across the water till the ache 



The Last Crew 

Was more than we could bear; 

Till eyes could almost see, 

Ears almost hear. 

And waiting there, 

I seemed to feel the beach 

Slip from my reach, 

While all the stars went blank. 

The smell of oil and death enveloped me. 

And I could feel 

The crouching figures straining at a crank, 

Knees under chins, and heads drawn sharply down, 

The heave and sag of shoulders, 

Sting of sweat; 

An eighth braced figure stooping to a wheel. 

Body to body in the stifling gloom, 

The sob and gasp of breath against an air 

Empty and damp and fetid as a tomb. 

With them I seemed to reel 

Beneath the spin and heel 

When combers took them fair, 

Bruising their bodies, 

Lifting black water where 

Their feet clutched desperate at the floor. 

And as each body spent out of its ebbing store 
Of strength and hope, 
I felt the forward thrust. 
At first so sure, 

CS9 3 



Carolina Chansons 

Fail in its rhythm, 

Falter slow, 

And slower — 

Hang an endless moment — 

Till in a rush came fear — 

Fear of the sea, that it might win again, 

Gathering one crew more. 

Making them pay in vain. 

Then through the horror of it, like a clear 

Sweet wind among the stars, 

I felt the lift 

And drive of heart and will 

Working their miracles until 

Spent muscles tensed again to offer all 

In one transcendent gift. 

Ill 

A sudden flood of moonlight drenched the sea. 

Pointing the scene in sharp, strong black and white. 

Sumter came shouldering through the night, 

Battered and grim. 

The curve of ships shook off their dim 

Vague outlines of a dream; 

And stood, patient as death, 

So certain in their pride, 

So satisfied 



The Last Crew 

To wait 

The slow inevitableness of Fate. 

Close, where the channel 

Narrowed to the bay, 

The Housatonic lay 

Black on the moonlit tide, 

Her wide 

High sweep of spars 

Flaunting their arrogance among the stars. 

Darkness again, 

Swift-winged and absolute. 

Gulping the stars. 

Folding the ships and sea, 

Holding us waiting, mute. 

Then, slowly in the void. 

There grew a certainty 

That silenced fear. 

The very air 

Was stirring to the march of Destiny. 

One blinding second out of endless time 
Fell, sundering the night. 
I saw the Housatonic hurled, 
A ship of light. 
Out of a molten sea, 
Hang an unending pulse-beat, 
1:61 3 



Carolina Chansons 

Glowing, stark; 

While the hot clouds flung back a sullen roar. 
Then all her pride, so confident and sure, 
Went reeling down the dark. 

Out of the blackness wave on livid wave 
Leapt into being — thundered to our feet; 
Counting the moments for us, beat by beat, 
Until the last and smallest dwindled past. 
Trailing its pallor like a winding-sheet 
Over the last crew and its chosen grave. 

IV 

Morning swirled in from the sea, 

And down by the low river-wall, 

In a long unforgettable row, 

Man faces tremulous, old; 

Terrible faces of youth, 

Broken and seared by the war, 

Where swift fire kindled and blazed 

From embers hot under the years. 

While hands gripped a cane or a crutch ; 

Patient dumb faces of women, 

Mothers, sisters, and wives : 

And the vessel hull-down in the sea. 

Where the waters, just stirring from sleep, 

Lifted bright hands to the sun. 



The Last Crew 

Hiding their lusty young dead, 
Holding them jealously close 
Down to the cold harbor floor. 

There would be eight of them. 

Here in the gathering light 

Were waiting eight women or more 

Who wete destined forever to pay, 

Who never again would laugh back 

Into the eyes of life 

In the old glad, confident way. 

Each huddled dumbly to each ; 

But eyes could not lift from the sea, 

Only hands touched in the dawn. 

^^He would have gone, my man; 

He was like that. In the night 

When I awoke with a start, 

And brought his voice up from my dream. 

That was goodbye and godspeed. 

I know he is there with the rest.'' 

Brave, but with quivering lips, 
Each alone in the press of the crowd, 
Was saying it over and over. 

The day flooded all of the sky ; 
And the ships of the sullen blockade 
1:633 



Carolina Chansons 

Weighed anchor and drew down the wind, 

Leaving their wreck to the waves. 

Hour heaved slowly on hour, 

Yet how could the city rejoice 

With the women out there by the wall ! 

Night grew under the wharves, 

And crept through the listening streets. 

Until only the red of the tiles 

Seemed warm from the breath of the day; 

And the faces that waited and watched 

Blurred into a wavering line. 

Like foam on the curve of the dark, 

Down there by the reticent sea. 

What if the darkness should bring 
The lean blockade-runners across 
With food for the hungry and spent . . . 
Who could joy in the sudden release 
While the faces, still-smiling, but wan. 
Turned slowly to hallow the town? 

D. H. 



1:643 



LANDBOUND 

BRING me one breath from the deep salt sea, 
Ye vagrant upland airs ! 
Over your forest and field and lea, 
From the windy deeps that have mothered me, 
To the heart of one who cares. 

Clear to the peace of the sunUt park. 
You bring with your evening lull 
The vesper song of the meadow lark; 
But my soul is sick for the seething dark, 
And the scream of a wind-blown gull. 

And bring to me from the ocean's breast 
No crooning lullaby; 

But the shout of a bleak storm-riven crest 
As it shoulders up in the sodden West 
And hurtles down the sky. 

That, breathing deep, I may feel the sweep 
Of the wind and the driving rain. 
For so I know that my heart will leap 
To meet the call of the strident deep. 
And will thrill to life again. 

D. H, 

1:653 



TWO PAGES 
FROM THE BOOK OF THE SEA ISLANDS 

PAGE ONE 

Shadows 

THERE is deliberateness in all sea-island ways, 
As alien to our days as stone wheels are. 
The Islands cannot see the use of life 
Which only lives for change. 
There days are flat, 
And all things must move slowly; 
Even the seasons are conservative — 
No sudden flaunting of wild colors in the fall. 
Only a gradual fading of the green, 
As if the earth turned slowly, 
Or looked with one still face upon the sun 
As Venus does — 

Until the trees, the fields, the marshes, 
All turn dun, dull Quaker-brown, 
And a mild winter settles down. 
And mosses are more gray. 

All human souls are glasses which reflect 
The aspects of the outer world; 



Pages from Book of Sea Islands 

See what terrible gods the huge Himalayas bred! 

And the fierce Jewish Jaywah came 

From the hot Syrian deserts 

With his inhibitory decalogue. 

The gods of little hills are always tame; 

Here God is dull, where all things stay the same. 

No change on these sea-islands ! 

The huge piled clouds range 

White in the cobalt sky ; 

The moss hangs, 

And the strong, tiring sea-winds blow — 

While day on glistering day goes by. 

The horses plow with hanging heads, 

Slow, followed by a black-faced man, 

Indifferent to the sun; 

The old cotton bushes hang with whitened heads; 

And there among the live-oak trees. 

Peep the small whitewashed cabins, 

Painted blue, perhaps, and scarlet-turbaned women, 

Ample-hipped, with voices soft and warm 

With the lean hounds and chocolate children swarm. 

Day after day the ocean pumps 
The awful valve-gates of his heart, 
Diastole and systole through these estuaries; 
The tides flow in long, gray, weed-streaked lines; 

1:673 



Carolina Chansons 

The salt water, like the planet's lifeblood, goes 

As if the earth were breathing with long- taken breaths 

And we were very near her heart. 

No wonder that these faces show a tired dismay, 
Looking on burning suns, and scarcely blithe in 

May; 
Spring's coming is too fierce with life; 
And summer is too long ; 

The stunted pine trees struggle with the sand 
Till the eyes sicken with their dwarfing strife. 

There are old women here among these island homes, 

With dull brown eyes that look at something gray, 

And tight silver hair, drawn back in lines. 

Like the beach grass that's always blown one way; 

With such a melancholy in their faces 

I know that they have lived long in these places. 

The tides, the hooting owls, the daylight moons, 

The leprous lights and shadows of the mosses. 

The funereal woodlands of these coasts. 

Draped like a perpetual hearse. 

And memories of an old war's ancient losses. 

Dwell in their faces' shadows like gray ghosts. 

And worse — 

The terror of the black man always near — 

The drab level of the ricefields and the marsh 

Lends them a mask of fear. 

1:68 3 



Pages from Book of Sea Islands 

PAGE TWO 

Sunshine 

THIS is a different page. 
Do you suppose the sun here lavishes his heat 
For nothing, in these islands by the sea? 
No ! The great green-mottled melons ripen in the fields, 
Bleeding with scarlet, juicy pith deliciously; 
And the exuberant yams grow golden, thick and sweet; 
And white potatoes, in grave-rows. 
With leaves as rough as cat tongues; 
And pearly onions, and cabbages 
With white flesh, sweet as chicken meat. 

These the black boatmen bring to town 
On barges, heaped with severed breasts of leaves, 
Driven by put-put engines 
Down the long canals, quavering with song, 
With hail and chuckle to the docks along, 
Seeing their dark faces down below 
RedupHcated in the sunset glow, 
While from the shore stretch out the quivering lines 
Of the flat, palm-like, reflected pines 
That inland lie like ranges of dark hills in lines. 
And so to town — 

Weaving odd baskets of sweet grass, 
Lazily and slow. 
To sell in the arcaded market. 
Where men sold their fathers not so long ago. 

1:693 



Carolina Chansons 

For all their poverty, 

These patient black men live 

A life rich in warm colors of the fields, 

Sunshine and hearty foods, 

Delighted with the gifts that earth can give, 

And old tales of Plateye and BreW Rabbit; 

While the golden- velvet cornpone browns 

Underneath the lid among hot ashes, 

Where the groundnuts roast, 

Round shadowy fires at nights, 

With tales of graveyard ghost, 

While eery spirituals ring. 

And organ voices sing, 

And sticks knock maddening rhythms on the floor 

To shuffling youngsters ''cutting " buck-and-wing; 

Dogs bark; ^ 

And dog-eyed pickaninnies peek about the door. 

Sundays, along the moss-draped roads, 

The beribboned black folk go to church 

By threes and twos, carrying their shoes. 

With orange turbans, ginghams, rainbow hats; 

Then bucks flaunt tiger-lily ties and watchet suits, 

Smoking cob pipes and faintly sweet cheroots. 

Wagons with oval wheels and kitchen chairs screech by, 

Where Joseph-coated white-teethed maidens sit 

Demurely, 

While the old mule rolls back the ivory of his eye. 

C7°3 



Pages from Book of Sea Islands 

Soon from the whitewashed churches roll away 
Among the live oak trees, 
Rivers of melancholy harmonies, 
Full of the sorrows of the centuries 
The white man hears, but cannot feel. 

But it is always Sunday on sea-islands. 

Plantation bells, calling the pickers from the fields, 

Are like old temple gongs; 

And the wind tells monodies among the pines, 

Playing upon their strings the ocean's songs; 

The ducks fly in long, trailing lines; 

Skeows squonk and marsh-hens quank 

Among the tidal fiats and rushes rank on rank ; 

On island tufts the heron feeds its viscid young; 

And the quick mocker catches 

From lips of sons of slaves the eery snatches, 

And trolls them as no lips have ever sung. 

Oh! It is good to be here in the spring, 

When water still stays solid in the North, 

When the first jasmine rings its golden bells, 

And the " wild wistaria " puts forth; 

But most because the sea then changes tone; 

Talking a whit less drear. 

It gossips in a smoother monotone. 

Whispering moon-scandal in the old earth's ear. 

H. A. 



MODERN PHILOSOPHER 

THEY fight your battles for you every day, 
The zealous ones, who sorrow in your life. 
Undaunted by a century of strife. 
With urgent fingers still they point the way 
To drawing rooms, in decorous array. 
And moral Heavens where no casual wife 
May share your lot; where dice and ready knife 
Are barred; and feet are silent when you pray. 

But you have music in your shufiSing feet, 
And spirituals for a lenient Lord, 
Who lets you sing your promises away. 
You hold your sunny corner of the street, 
And pluck deep beauty from a banjo chord : 
Philosopher whose future is today! 

D. H. 



CrO 



UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS 

THE judge, who lives impeccably upstairs 
With dull decorum and its implication, 
Has all his servants in to family prayers, 
And edifies his soul with exhortation. 

Meanwhile his blacks live wastefully downstairs; 
Not always chaste, they manage to exist 
With less decorum than the judge upstairs. 
And find withal a something that he missed. 

This painful fact a Swede philosopher, 
Who tarried for a fortnight in our city. 
Remarked, one evening at the meal, before 
We paralyzed him silent with our pity — 

Saying the black man living with the white 
Had given more than white men could requite. 

H. A. 



In^ 



IIACMTOLLKRIN' TIME 

BLACK Julius peered out ii\m\ the galley fly; 
Behind Jim Island, lying long and dim; 
An infra owl-light tinged the twilight sky 
As if a bonlire burned for iluMiiMin. 

Dark orange llanies eanie leering through tiie pines, 
And then the moon's faee, struggling with a sneeze, 
Along the llat horizon's U'\ I'l lines 
Her nostrils fingered with palmetto trees. 

Her platinum wand made water wrinkles buekle; 
Old Julius gave appreciative ehuekle; 
"It's jes about hag-hollerin' time," he said. 
T watched the globous buckeyes in his head 

Peer back along the bloody moon-wash dim 
To see the lish- tailed water-witches swim. 

H. A. 



1:74] 



MACABRE IN MACAWS 

4 FTER the hurricane of the late forties, 
I\. I^eter Polite says, in the live-oak trees 
Were weird, macabre macaws 
And ash-colored cockatoos, blown overseas 
From Nassau and the West Indies. 
These hopped about like dead men's thoughts 
Among the draggled Spanish moss, 
lYeening themselves, all at a loss, 
Mewing faint caws, 
And shrieking from nostalgia — 
With dull screams like a child 
Bom with neuralgia — 
And this seems true to me. 
Fitting the landscape's drab grotesquery. 

H. A. 



i7s:\ 



GAMESTERS ALL * 

THE river boat had loitered down its way; 
The ropes were coiled, and business for the day 
Was done. The cruel noon closed down 
And cupped the town. 
Stray voices called across the blinding heat, 
Then drifted off to shadowy retreat 
Among the sheds. 
The waters of the bay 
Sucked away 

In tepid swirls, as listless as the day. 
Silence closed about me, like a wall, 
Final and obstinate as death. 
Until I longed to break it with a call, 
Or barter life for one deep, windy breath. 

A mellow laugh came rippling 

Across the stagnant air. 

Lifting it into little waves of life. 

Then, true and clear, 

I caught a snatch of harmony; 

Sure lilting tenor, and a drowsing bass, 

Elusive chords to weave and interlace, 

* "Contemporary Verse," prize poem for 192 1. 

1:763 



Gamesters All 

And poignant little minors, broken short, 

Like robins calling June — 

And then the tune: 

*'0h, nobody knows when de Lord is goin ter call, 

Roll dent hones. 

It may be in de Winter time, and maybe in de Fall, 

Roll dem hones. 

But yer got ter leabe yer baby an yer home an all — 

So roll dem hones, 

Oh my brudder. 

Oh my brudder. 

Oh my brudder, 

Roll dem hones T^ 

There they squatted, gambling away 

Their meagre pay; 

Fatalists all. 

I heard the muted fall 

Of dice, then the assured. 

Retrieving sweep of hand on roughened board. 

I thought it good to see 

Four lives so free 

From care, so indolently sure of each tomorrow, 

And hearts attuned to sing away a sorrow. 

Then, like a shot 
Out of the hot 

1:77a 



Carolina Chansons 

Still air, I heard a call: 

''Throw up your hands! I've got you all I 

It's thirty days for craps. 

Come, Tony, Paul! 

Now, Joe, don't be a fool ! 

I've got you cool." 

I saw Joe's eyes, and knew he'd never go. 

Not Joe, the swiftest hand in River Bow! 

Springing from where he sat, straight, cleanly made, 

He soared, a leaping shadow from tlie shade 

With fifty feet to go. 

It was tlie stiffest hand he ever played. 

To win the corner meant 

Deep, sweet content 

Among his laughing kind ; 

To lose, to suiTer blind, 

Degrading slavery upon ''the gang," 

Witli killing suns, and fever-ridden nights 

Behind relentless bars 

Of prison cars. 

He hung a breathless second in the sun, 

The staring road before him. Then, like one 

Who stakes his all, and has a gamester's heart, 

His laughter flashed. 

He lunged — I gave a start. 

God ! What a. man ! 

1:783 



Gamesters All 

The massive shoulders hunched, and as he ran 

With head bent low, and splendid length of limb, 

I almost felt the beat 

Of passionate life that surged in him 

And winged his spurning feet. 

And then my eyes went dim. 

The Marshal's gun was out. 

I saw the grim 

Short barrel, and his face 

Aflame with the excitement of the chase. 

He was an honest sportsman, as they go. 

He never shot a doe, 

Or spotted fawn. 

Or partridge on the ground. 

And, as for Joe, 

He'd wait until he had a yard to go. 

Then, if he missed, he'd laugh and call it square. 

My gaze leapt to the comer — waited there. 

And now an arm would reach it. I saw hope flare 

Across the runner's face. 

Then, like a pang 
In my own heart, 
The pistol rang. 

The form I watched soared forward, spun the curve. 
''By God, you've missed!" 

1:793 



Carolina Chansons 

The Marshal shook his head. 

No, there he lay, face downward in the road. 

*'I reckon he was dead 

Before he hit the ground," 

The Marshal said. 

''Just once, at fifty feet, 

A moving target too. 

That's just about as good 

As any man could do ! 

A little tough; 

But, since he ran, 

I call it fair enough." 

He mopped his head, and started down the road. 
The silence eddied round him, turned and flowed 
Slowly back and pressed against the ears. 
Until unnumbered flies set it to droning, 
And, down the heat, I heard a woman moaning. 

D. H. 



CSo] 



ECLIPSE 

ONCE melodies of street-cries washed these walls, 
Glad as the refluent song 
Of cheerful waters from a happy spring 
That shout their way along; 
Such cries were bom in other days from lips 
A spirit taught to sing. Now it is gone! 

Memory expects those hymns for shrimp and prawn, 
Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge 
Of Orpheus inside a murky skin, 
Who looked the gold sun in the eye 
While garden mists grew thin, 
And intoned "Hoppin^ Johnr 

As when the shadow of the gray eclipse 

Haggards the countryside, 

When moon-fooled birds have nothing more to say. 

And soft untimely bats begin to slide; 

As darkness sweeps the morning light away. 

So silence brushes music now from lips. 

Oh ! Can it be the songless spirit of this age 
Has slain the ancient music, or that ears 



Carolina Chansons 

Have harsher thresholds? Only tliis I know: 
The streets grow more discordant with the years; 
And that which bids the huckster sing no more, 
Will drive tlie llower-womim from tlie door. 

H. A. 



1:823 



EDGAR ALLAN POE * 

ONCE in the starlight 
When the tides were low, 
And the surf fell sobbing 
To the undertow, 
I trod the windless dunes 
Alone with Edgar Poe. 

Dim and far behind us, 
Like a fabled bloom 
On the myrtle thickets, 
In the swaying gloom 
Hung the clustered windows 
Of the barrack-room. 

Faint on the evening 

Tenuous and far 

As the beauty shaken 

From a vagrant star, 

Throbbed the ache and passion 

Of an old guitar. 

Life closed behind us 
Like a swinging gate, 

* See the note on Poe. 



Carolina Chansons 

Leaving us unfettered 
And emancipate; 
Confidants of Destiny, 
Intimates of Fate. 

I could only cower, 
Silent, while the night, 
Seething with its planets, 
Parted to our sight, 
Showing us infinity 
In its breadth and height. 

But my chosen comrade. 
Tossing back his hair 
With the old loved gesture, 
Raised his face, and there 
Shone the agony that those 
Loved of God must bear. 

Oh, we heard the many things 

Silence has to say; 

He and I together 

As alone we lay 

Waiting for the slow, sweet 

Miracle of day. 

When the bugle's silver 
Spiralled up the dawn, 

C843 



Edgar Allan Poe 

Dew-clear, night-cool, 
And the stars were gone, 
I arose exultant, 
Like a man new bom. 

But my friend and master, 
Heavy-limbed and spent. 
Turned, as one must turn at last 
From the sacrament; 
And his eyes were deep with God's 
Burning discontent. 

D. H. 



nss] 



S' 



ALCHEMY * 

OME souls are strangers in this bourne; 
Beauty is born from such men's discontent; 
Earth's grass and stones, 
Her seas, her forests, and her air 
Are seas and forests till they mirror on some pool 
Unusually reflecting in an exile's mind, 
Who tarries here protesting and alone; 
And then they get strange shapes from memories of 
other stars 
The banished knew, or spheres he dreams will be. 
Thus is the fivefold vision of the earth recast 
By ghostly alchemy. 

But there are favored spots 
Where all earth's moods conspire to make a show 
Of things to be transmuted into beauty 
By alchemic minds. 
Such is this island beach where Poe once walked, 
And heard the mehc throbbing of the sea, 
With muffled sound of harbor bells — 
Bells — he loved bells ! 

* See the note on Poe. 
1186 3 



Alchemy 

And here are drifting ghosts of city chimes 
Come over water through the evening mist, 
Like knells from death-ships off the coasts of spectral 
lands. 

I think some dusk their metal voices 

Yet will call him back 
To walk upon this magic beach again, 
While Grief holds carnival upon the harbor bar. 
Heralded by ravens from another air, 
The master will pass, pacing here. 
Wrapped in a cape dark as the unborn moon. 
There will be lightning underneath a star; 
And he will speak to me 
Of archipelagoes forgot, 
Atolls in sailless seas, where dreams have married 
thought. 

H. A. 



CSy] 



OSCEOLA * 
An Epitaph 

THE feathers of the eagle-bonnets ride upon the 
north wind; 
The sachems and their totems have perished in the 
fire; 
Through the valleys and the rivers and the moun- 
tains that you fought for 

Beats the quick desire. 
In the happy hunting ground of proven warriors, 
You have passed the pipe of peace at council fire 
With the pale-face and the Zulus' mighty chief- 
tains — 

Rest with dead desire. 

H. A. 

* The Indian Chief, Osceola, lies buried at Fort Moultrie. 



CSS] 



MAGNOLIA GARDENS 
A Prose-Poem 

IN the spring when the first midges dance and 
warm days lure the last-year's butterfly, the 
scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the 
ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves 
his winter ooze, and the widening ^'O " of the ripple 
which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across 
the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the 
mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head 
downward in the red water. 

When the first frog honks with the bull-voiced 
trumpet of resurgent spring, the jasmine rings its 
little hawk-bells, golden harp notes through the forest; 
and the usurping wistaria assumes the purple, reigning 
imperial and alone, flaunting its palidementum in a 
cascade of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses. Its 
sleek, muscular vine-arms writhe round the clasped 
bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept beneath a 
cloak, and the cloisonne pavilion of their dalliance 
drips a blue-glaze of shadows overhead. 

Underneath this motley canopy of gray and blue, 
lush with the early tenderness of leaves, the pink 



Carolina Chansons 

azaleas open light-shy eyes like pupils of albinos, 
sloughing off delicate pods that smoulder, when the 
wind blows, live coals among the gray of furnace 
ashes. Here are magenta carpets fit for leprechauns, 
when crescent moons glinnner upon the ocher ponds, 
and the slow fireflies light their phantom lanterns, 
weaving to and fro about the ivory-orange marble 
of the tomb. 

Each April day brings opalescent waves of birds 
that dart like living brands about the aisles to light 
the (lower lamps; nonpareils, orioles, and humming- 
birds, a mist of speed upon their wings, while the 
blue heron stands one-legged by the p(mds, watching 
the garden till it seethes and llames with colors from 
the cloaks of mandarins. 

High in the ancient forest the magnolias l)urn the 
perfect alban lucence of their lamps; white are their 
ivory cups like priestly linen, and fragrant with the 
tang of foreign citrons. An esoteric, mirrored swan 
slides by like Cleopatra's barge, while drums of color 
beaten by a maniac blend with old tints of Leonardo's 
dreams, colors that God might see if his own lightning 
blasted out his eyes. 

This march of color chants a strange barbaric fit- 
ness of dithyrambic chords, and moves processional 



Magnolia Gardens 

across the days like some encarnadined durbar, where 
a huge Ethiopian eunuch in red moon-shaped sHppers 
and an orange turban walks with a glittering scimctar, 
leading a brace of sleepy leopards drugged and golden 
eyed; the caparisoned elephants swing down a latticed 
street; silk shawls hang from balconies, brushing the 
domed gilt of howdahs; and ruby-roped, the mahara- 
jahs sway behind the mahout with his peavey-goad. 

The stark denial of the blue-ribbed sky looks down 
upon this garden, where the wantonness of earth is 
flaunted in the spring against the face of heaven's 
void sterility. Here stolid faces look ashamed. When 
the sun leans on boreal wings, there is a month that 
lovers walk here justified, while flower throats cry in 
vast choirs, *' Glory to life ! " and the uplifted trumpets 
of vine tubas shout with noise of color set to notes 
of bloom. 



Cqi] 



MIDDLETON GARDEN 

THIS is a garden where the Son of Heaven 
Well might walk, 
With all his dragon-broidered mandarins, 
To the plucked sound of tenor instruments. 
With peacocks, kites, and little red balloons. 
Mirrored with incense and rice-paper lights, 
And old bronze lanterns on the full moon nights. 
Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink lagoons. 

If cardinals in sun-blood robes were here 

To kiss the ring of gorgeous Borgia popes; 

Or bold de Gama's loot from Malabar: 

Topaz and ruby, chrysolite and beryl, 

The golden idol with a thousand hands. 

And ropes of pearl ; 

They would seem lesser than these flowers are, 

Whose masculine magnificence makes riches pale. 

And yet with all its oriental hue 

There is a touch of Holland, 

Of canals at Loo, 

Where Orange William planned a boxwood maze. 

The house has Flemish curves upon its eaves; 



Middleton Garden 

Its doorways yearn for buckle-shoed young bloods, 
Smoking clay pipes, with lace a-droop from sleeves- 
Moonlight on terraces is like a story told 
By sleepy link-boys 'round old sedan chairs 
In days when tulip bulbs were gold. 

The faint, crisp rustle of magnolia leaves 
Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade, 
The low bird- voices ripple like the laugh 
Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade; 
Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs 
To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees — 
Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs — 
Azaleas? — was a sneeze blown down the breeze? 

This terrace is a stage set by the years, 
Fit for the pageants of the centuries; 
That fire-scarred ruin marks an act of tears — 
Charm is more winsome coped with tragedies. 
Here flaunted tilted hats and crinolines, 
Small parasols, hoopskirts, and bombazines. 
When turbaned slaves walked dykes in single file, 
And rice-fields made horizons, otherwhile. 

All, all has passed, but change, 
Gnawed by the rat-like teeth of avid years. 
The masters, through the door, to mysteries 
Beyond blind panels 'mid the moss-scar ved trees, 

C933 



Carolina Chansons 

Uncanny gates, where negroes faintly bold, 
At high noon in the tide of summer heat, 
Stand in the draught of tomb-air deathly cold 
That flows like glacial water 'round their feet. 

H. A. 



1:94a 



THE GOOSE CREEK VOICE 

THIS is the low-doored house among funereal trees, 
Where one May dusk they brought Louise, 
With music slow. 
And sobbing low, 
The old slaves crooning eerily. 
She died asleep and weeping wearily. 
She had a poppy-strange disease; 
A beauty that was more than carnal, 
How durst they leave her in the chamel? 
She might be sleeping eerily ! 

Hush! They have locked her in the tomb. 
Among the silences and wilting bloom; 
Life's melody of voices drifts away — 

Mistaken ! 
Was it an owlet in the thorns that moaned? 
The churchyard moonlight turns ash-gray — 
Hush ! Pale Louise ! 
The dead must not awaken. 
Something a twittering cry is uttering. 
Is that a bird there on her breast, 
Lost in the fragrant gloom. 
Wakening to morning twilight in the tomb? 
No bird — it is her folded hands a-fiuttering! 

1952 



Carolina Chansons 

I think I should liavc died to see her rise 

Among the witliered wreaths 

And spider-cluttered palls 

Of her dead uncles' funerals, 

While streams of horror fed the blue lakes of her eyes. 

I known I would have died to see her rise. 

Over the fields a voice calls from the tomb, 

Plcadini^ and plcadinfi^ drearily, 

But all the slaves have fied 

And left her talking to her coffined dead. 

And whimpering eerily. 

The young birds die 

To see old hands thrust from the window-slit, 

Clutching the light in handfuls of despair; 

Stark fear has stroked the color from her hair, 

While from the window comes 

The babbled whisper of her prayer. 

Night is like spiders in her mouth; 

By day they spin a film across her eyes. 

Now night; now day — 

The birds come back; 

It is another year: 

The withering voice they fear 

Has nothing more to say. 

But yet once more 
Her kinsmen came 

i: 96 3 



The Goose Creek Voice 

With nodding plume and pall 

And music slow, 

And, sobbing low. 

They fluttered back the door, and lol— 

She leaned against the slit-window 

Her web-like, bony hands against the wall. 

And all about her, like a summer cloud 

Rippled her leprous hair. 

One bleached and shuddering shroud. 

H. A. 



1:973 



THE LEAPING POLL 

AT early morning when the earth grows cold, 
1\ When river mists creep up, 
And those asleep are nearest death, 
She died. 

The feather would not flutter in her breath; 
And those who long had watched her slipped away, 
Too weary then to weep; 
They could do that next day — 
They left her lonely on the bed, 
Under a long, glistening sheet, in feeble tallow-shine, 
Rigid from muffled feet to swathed head. 

This in old days before the Turkish cure 

Had driven out the pox ; 

Next morning, while slave carpenters 

Were hammering at the oblong box. 

The sun revived her and she breathed again. 

Like Lazarus, and in later years grew beautiful, 

And was the mother of strong men. 

These things her father, master of an ancient place, 
Pondered, and read of men in antique times 
Who wakened in the charnel from a trance. 
Often his eyes would rest on her askance. 
And fear grew on him, and strange dreams he had a-bed, 

US] 



The Leaping Poll 

Till waking and asleep he turned his head, 
Front-back, front-back, from side to side, 
Looking for Death. At last, one night 
He heard crisp footfalls in his room, 
And stared his soul out in the gloom, 
Peering until he died. 

But when they broke the seals upon his will. 
They found each codicil and long bequest 
Was held in trust until 
The heirs should carry out his last request — 
To burn his body (naming witnesses) ; 
And they, all eagerness to share, 
Prepared to carry out this strange behest. 

A pile of lightwood on the river bank. 

Neighbors on horseback, and the slaves. 

With teeth as white as eyeballs, rank on rank, 

Watched on the pyre the form wrapped in a shroud. 

Lonely among the lolHng tongues of flames — 

The smoke streamed, trailing in a saffron cloud, 

The greedy noise of fire grew loud. 

Then, "whiff," the shroud burned with a flare: 

The dead man's eyes looked down 

Like china moons upon the crowd. 

They saw him slowly shake his head. 

The thing denied that it was dead. 

While from the blacks arose a babblement of prayer. 



Carolina Chansons 

Surely the head must stop — 

Not till the fire caved ! 

Then from the very top 

The loosened poll came with a leap, 

Bounding three times, it took the river-steep; 

Down, down the river bank — all they 

Ran after it like school boys for a ball. 

God ! How the thing could roll ! 

It seemed the devil kicked the leaping poll. 

At last it stopped at bay. 

Staring across a tidal flat, 

Where spider lilies frightened day. 

They buried it within a lonesome wood, 

With trembling hands, beneath a foreign stone. 

But there were some who said 

It moved its lips; 

And when they went away, the earth stirred 

And they heard it moan. 

Now it comes leaping down the tunnel roads 

Where the moss hangs like stalactites, 

Screaming out curses, snapping at the toads; 

Negroes who pass there on the moonless nights 

Behind them hear a sound that stops their breath. 

The keen wind whistles through its teeth, 

And the white skull goes bounding by 

Looking for Death. 

H. A. 



THE BLOCKADE RUNNER 

I 

THREE years ! 
Since I had seen the city, in the time 
We waited through the tenseness of the hours, 
While nerves were zither strings 
For fate to jar upon : 
All through that night we counted old St. Michael's 

chimes 
Now three o'clock — 

The bells spoke as they had on marriage days, 
With high and silver-happy tongues 
Yet somehow they had gained an irony, 
For out across the quiet April bay 
Grim, new-built forts grinned at old Sumter 
Through the morning mist — 
One — two — three — four — 
And no sound yet! Then — 
Thirty minutes like a Kfe too long; 
A red flash dirked the night; 
I thought a voice cried, ''DOOM"; 
That was the gun that killed a million men. 

God ! How the city woke ! 

With what a rush of wonder in her streets, 



Carolina Chansons 

^'Burr^^ of strained voices, earthquakes of feet, 

Tramping to rolling drums. 

The crowd swept to the Battery. 

Roofs were black with gazing folk in knots, 

Leveling their spyglasses 

Like phalanx spears. 

From sea wall to the chimney tops. 

Over the rippling harbor came 

The growling, bull-dog bark of culverins, 

Red rockets curved and plunged 

Across the dawn. 

The world seemed drunk with confidence 

That day — 

Some secret nervousness about the slaves; 

What they might think or say; 

But they did neither; 

The bugles shouted at the Citadel. 

Hours were punctuated by glad bells, 

Soon to be hid away, 

And gales of laughter came from gardens, 

Where bright tear-dashed eyes must weep farewells 

The braver lips refused to falter — 

Mouths then seemed only made to kiss 

For men in gray, 

Who left the ancient houses of proud names. 

Through magic gates upon that magic day 

When the lost cause was still-born in its hope. 



The Blockade Runner 
II 



And I had gone — 
It seemed no man's work then — 
To buy supplies from '^good friends" at the North- 
Two years at old St. Louis and then down the river, 
Past winking lights of towns and federal rams, 
In flat-boats with a precious freight of barrels, 
Marked for the Yankees; but one night 
We slipped past their last fort 
And floated down to Vicksburg through the dark. 
How dull the lanterns glimmered at the quay ! 
But there was welcome, too. 
Proud, thankful hands. 
To take the medicine and powder, 
And unload sorghum barrels 
That we might change to quinine and to gold. 
If we could ever get them to Nassau. 
The column which they printed in the ''News " 
On wall-paper, first made me think 
That it was worth-while man's work after all. 

Then, out across the miles of leaguered states, 
Through pine-barrens where frowsy men in gray 
Lay with their wounded in the haggard camps — 
A glimpse of old times in Atlanta 
Like a last febrile glow in well-loved eyes. 
Now rolling in flat cars, trundling to the sea. 
Back of the bull-head, wood-devouring engines. 

C1033 



Carolina Chansons 

At last by night to Charleston 

Just before the iron ring closed — 

Ours was the last freight train of the war, 

Before the anaconda squeezed; 

But I had won (perhaps) if we could get 

Those precious barrels to England or Nassau. 

How changed my city was — 
The grass grew in her streets, 
And there were blackened ruins raw with fire; 
A few old darkies crept along her ways; 
The busy thunder of the drays was gone; 
And ruin spoke with statue lips. 
Only a glimmering candle lurked in landward win- 
dows. 
Dim through shimmering shutter chinks — 
Silence — silence was over all — no bells — 
St. Michael's were in hiding. 
And St. Philip's spoke another voice. 
And rung a bla,tant dirge to bluecoats, far 
* In old Virginia, with Lee's batteries. 
The miles of cotton rotted on the wharfs, 
And the Swamp Angel belled with distant shocks 
Like earthquake jars; 
There was heat-lightning in the sky 
That God had never made. 
From our sea-island batteries; 

* See the note on the chimes at back of book. 
C1043 



The Blockade Runner 

And once a shell fell somewhere in the town 
With a despairing scream that hope was dead. 

Such were the streets — 
And it was starving time in houses 
Where fat generosity once ran amuck, 
No fires in inns, no cheerful bark of hounds, 
Or stroke of social hoofs upon the stones. 
And the long docks bit the black water 
Like old loosened fangs that held the sea 
In one last grinning jaw-clamp of despair. 

I knew those docks 

When at the hour of noon 

A molten clangor shivered cheerful air 

And thousand ship-bells rang — 

And now — only a drifting buoy-bell rung 

The knell of hope with its emphatic tongue, 

Cut loose by the blockaders 

To wander down the harbor in despair. 

Ill 

Close in the shadow of a warehouse lay 
The blockade-runner with her smokestacks gray, 
Back-raking like her masts, and up her hatches 
Came voices, and the furnace-light in patches 
Beat on the sails, and there alone was life — 



Carolina Chansons 

The stevedores sang muffled snatches, and a strife 
Of bales and barrels streamed down her yawning hold; 
Cotton more valuable than money, 
And barrels of the St. Louis sorghum and molasses, 
Honey to lure the bees of English gold. 

Three days she lay, this arrow-pointed boat. 

With a light gold necklace, beaded at her throat, 

Something there was about her like a stoat 

That lies in wait to make a silent rush. 

And there was something in her like a thrush, 

For she had paddle-wheels, each like a wing. 

She had a long hornet stern that seemed to hold a sting. 

Sometimes her paddles slowly turned, 

For they kept steam up, waiting for a gale. 

It seemed as if the slim boat chafed and yearned 

To go hell-tearing under steam and sail. 

The oily water churned 

And made a slap-slap to the paddles' stroke; 

And a high painted canvas screen cut off 

The blue haze of the lightwood smoke. 

On the third evening, just at sunset, came 
A scud of driving cloud; the lightning's flame; 
The sun glared from a vicious, misty socket. 
And in the moaning twilight curved a rocket 
While a blue flame blurred and frayed 

1:106 3 



The Blockade Runner 

At Castle Pinckney; thus we knew the storm 
Had shifted the blockade. 

IV 

Out from the docks we shot 

Into the screaming night; 

We steered by lightning's light; 

The paddles beat a mad tattoo ; 

The gridded walking-beam 

Pumped up, pumped down, 

Against the misty gleam; 

Faster and faster jets the stand-pipes' steam. 

And the white water whirls 

Astern in phosphorescent whorls — 

It swirls 

And then leads backward green with light 

Of streaming foam across the velvet night. 

By the last lightning flare, 

That must be Sumter, bare 

Against a torn cloud like a rag; 

But now the wind begins to flag, 

And as it fails the engines lag; 

Then comes a low hail from the mast 

*' Avast "— 

Again the engines slow — 

Then stop — 

And we were drifting like a log 



Carolina Chansons 

As silent as a drowned corpse 
In the sea-set tide, 
Muffled in dripping fog. 

No word from all the ship — 

She seemed asleep — 

Only the cluck of water and the feel 

Of grim Atlantic rollers at the keel, 

Nuzzling two fathoms deep; 

They made her heel. 

The porpoise played about our copper lip. 

It seemed as if they were 

The only living things in all that blur, 

And we — 

The only ship upon an ancient sea. 

When suddenly a laugh broke through the spell; 

It was so near 

Our pulses lapsed a heart-beat, 

Struck with fear. 

The curtains of the fog were blown apart; 

Stark in the sallow moonlight's metal day. 

The white decks of a Yankee frigate lay. 

I saw the glint of moonlight on her bell; 

She was not twenty fathoms length away. 

A man's face leaped out in the cherry glow 

Of match flame in the hands he cupped 

About the pipe whose curling wreaths he supped. 



The Blockade Runner 

'Xlang! " like a fireman's gong 

Our engine signals rang; 

The paddles thrashed into a frothy song; 

Five ship's lengths we had forged along 

Before their bugles sang. 

We had ten long lengths on them 

Before their ship began to swerve. 

The rabid screw was frothing at her stern; 

But I could feel the verve 

Of our blithe timbers tremble; every nerve 

Of our good race-horse ship 

For open water seemed to yearn. 

That was a Titan's race; 

The answering rockets snaked it down the coast, 

Dying like scarlet worms 

Among the fog- wreaths; but we gained, 

And when her flaming cannon stabbed the mist 

They thundered at our ghost. 

So we were gone. 
With cotton in our furnace, 
Once the af t-stacks flared, ^ j 
And then we plied pitch-pine 
Dampened with turpentine. 
Until the black sea glared — 
But we had gone — 



Carolina Chansons 

Over the world's round shoulder 

Thrust the dawn, 

Their ugly, black masts dipping it hull down. 

Three days the paddles beat while we drove on ! 

And I had won; 

For on the fourth day as I sat 

In the black coffin-shadow of a boat, 

The burning decks a-wash with lime-white sun, 

I saw the graybeard lookout swell his throat 

And utter forth a glad and bronze hurrah, 

^'Zaw^ZTo/" he cried— 

We lined the windward side 

To cheer the washing palm tops of Nassau. 

H. A. 



Clio] 



BEYOND DEBATE 

OUT from the wrought-iron gate 
Miss Perdee drives in state; 
Miss Perdee wears the thin smile 
And the sleeves of 1888. 

Miss Perdee's face is stifled as a sonnet; 
Upon her wire-tight hair a duck-shaped bonnet 
Nests, nodding with a cachepeigne 
Of violets on it. 

East Bay, some tea and talk, them home by King. 
The horses have an antiquated plod; 
The team is old, but not too old to balk 
If driven north of Broad. 

Miss Perdee wears the sure air of a queen. 
Which only queens and Perdees can achieve. 
The Perdees had blue blood in Adam's veins 
When Adam had the rib he gave to Eve. 

Back through the wrought-iron gate 

Miss Perdee drives in state. 

Miss Perdee lives down on the Battery! 

Beyond debate. 

H. A. 

Cm] 



MARSH TACKIES * 

BROWSING on the salty marsh grass, 
Barrel-ribbed and blowsy-bellied, 
With a neigh as shrill as whistles 
And their mouths red-raw from thistles, 
I have seen the brown marsh tackles, 
Hiding in the swamps at Kiawah, 
With the gray mosquito patches 
Gory on their shaggy thatches. 
Balky, vicious, and degenerates. 
They are small as Spanish jennets, 
But their sires were with El Tarab, 
When he conquered Andalusia 
For the Prophet and the Arab; 
And they came with Ponce de Leon, 
When the Spaniard made a peon 
And a Christian of the Carib. 
Peering from palmetto thickets 
At some fort's coquina wickets, 
Startled Indians saw them grazing. 
Thunder-stamping and amazing 
As the beasts from other stars, 
When they galloped down savannas, 
And their masters seemed centaurs 
With the new white metal blazing. 
* See the note at the back of the book. 



Marsh Tackles 

Thus they came, these little beasts, 

With the men-at-arms and priests, 

In the west with Coronado 

When he reached the Colorado, 

In the east with bold De Soto 

In the search for El Dorado, 

And they packed the bells and toys 

That the chieftains loved like boys; 

Struggling through the swamps and briars 

After dons and tonsured friars; 

Dying in the forests dismal. 

Till the shrill of silver clarion 

Brought the buzzards to the carrion 

Round the smoke of lonely fires 

In a continent abysmal. 

So De Soto left them dying. 
Heedless of their human crying; 
Here he turned them loose to die 
Underneath a foreign sky; 
But they lived on thicket dross, 
On the leaves and Spanish moss — 
And I wonder, and I wonder. 
When I hear the startled thunder 
Of their hoofs die down the reaches 
Of these Carolina beaches. 

H. A. 



BACK RIVER 

''Med WAY Plantation" 

BACK River! What a name 
For yesterdays come back again today, 
Reborn to be tomorrows still the same — 
A landgrave built it when the English came; 
Then men made houses well 
With cunning hands. 
And service wore a nearer, feudal guise — 
Witness the stone where ''Rose, 
A faithful servant," lies. 

Parnassus stretches east, beyond that 

The plantation once called Ararat; 

But they have gone. 

Forgotten as an ancient drinking song; 

And the old houses, dull and roofless. 

Gape, with their doorways 

Like a dumb mouth toothless. 

With snake-engendering rooms that wall in fear. 

Silent, down forest roadways loved by deer. 

Sometimes at nights 

These skeletons of houses flash with lights. 



Back River 

And shadow-horsemen ride, 

Chasing wraith-deer 

With eery cry of hounds 

And shuddering cheer; 

While the moon makes her rounds, 

GHmmering through windows dead 

As the dead eyes in a dead man's head; 

And there is heard a misty horn — 

Down in the woods, 

Among the moss-draped solitudes, 

The voodoo rooster crows, 

While owls hoot on forlorn. 

But Back River wears a different face; 

It has not changed; — 

Time seems to love the place; 

Though all about it he has ranged. 

Here he has not 

Touched with his wand of rot — 

Something of its immortal live-oak sap suffuses 

Its sturdy men and houses and transfuses 

Change into state. 

The sunny hours wait at strange behest. 

Here restless Time himself has come to rest. 

The golden ivory of primeval light 

Dwells in its Spanish moss. 

Falling in living cascades from the trees, 



Carolina Chansons 

And who goes there in summer hears the bees 

Booming among the Pride of India trees, 

Dull grumbling tones, 

A deaf man dreams. 

Like far-off rumbling sound of boulder-stones 

Washed down by headlong streams. 

This is Time's temple; 

Here he sleepy lies. 

Watching the buzzards circle in the skies, 

While shrubs slough off the pod, 

Making a carpet delicate 

Of petals strewn upon the sod. 

Fit for the silver slippers of the moon 

Upon the streets of Nod. 

I saw him once asleep 
Down by the dark ponds 
Where alligators creep. 
He had been fishing with a willow withe. 
And by him lay his hourglass and scythe, 
Resting upon the grass; 
They lay there in the sun. 

And through the glass the sands had ceased to run. 

H. A. 



1:116 a 



DUSK 

THEY tell me she is beautiful, my City, 
That she is colorful and quaint, alone 
Among the cities. But I, I who have known 
Her tenderness, her courage, and her pity. 
Have felt her forces mould me, mind and bone, 
Life after life, up from her first beginning. 
How can I think of her in wood and stone 1 
To others she has given of her beauty. 
Her gardens, and her dim, old, faded ways, 
Her laughter, and her happy, drifting hours. 
Glad, spendthrift April, squandering her flowers, 
The sharp, still wonder of her Autumn days; 
Her chimes that shimmer from St. Michael's steeple 
Across the deep maturity of June, 
Like sunlight slanting over open water 
Under a high, blue, listless afternoon. 
But when the dusk is deep upon the harbor, 
She finds me where her rivers meet and speak, 
And while the constellations ride the silence 
High overhead, her cheek is on my cheek. 
I know her in the thrill behind the dark 
When sleep brims all her silent thoroughfares. 
She is the glamor in the quiet park 



Carolina Chansons 

That kindles simple things like grass and trees. 
Wistful and wanton as her sea-born airs, 
Bringer of dim, rich, age-old memories. 
Out on the gloom-deep water, when the nights 
Are choked with fog, and perilous, and blind, 
She is the faith that tends the calling lights. 
Hers is the stifled voice of harbor bells 
Muffled and broken by the mist and wind. 
Hers are the eyes through which I look on life 
And find it brave and splendid. And the stir 
Of hidden music shaping all my songs. 
And these my songs, my all, belong to her. 

D. H. 



Ciis] 



NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Clip] 



NOTES 

NOTE ON THE CHIMES 

TO ACCOMPANY '' SILENCES" 

The bells of Charleston, like the bells of London 
Town, have a peculiar interest. St. Michael's bells 
and clock were brought from England in 1764. When 
the British evacuated Charleston in 1782 they took the 
bells with them. A Mr. Ryhineu bought them in 
England and returned them. They were rehung in 
November, 1783. During the Civil War, St. Michael's 
steeple was the target for Federal artillery and fleet 
guns. In 186 1 the bells were taken to Columbia, S. C, 
where two of them were stolen, and the rest injured 
by fire when the city was burned. Those left were 
again sent to England, and recast in the original 
moulds. In March, 1867, they once again rang out 
from the spire. 

St. Phillip's Church stands in the old part of 
the town. During the Civil War its bells were cast 
into cannon. For a long time its steeple was used 
as a lighthouse. It is the center of forgotten things. 

The bells of St. Matthew's are modern and speak of 

1:121 3 



Carolina Chansons 

a new order, but all the bells are the voice of the town. 
They speak for her silences, which are eloquent. 



NOTE ON "THE PIRATES" 

The many inlets and sheltering coves of the Carolina 
coasts very early made the "low country " seaboard 
a rendezvous for pirates and a shelter to refit, and to 
bury their treasure. 

As early as 1565 the French from Ribault's settle- 
ment succumbed to the temptation to plunder their 
rich Spanish neighbors; and in the century before 
the coming of the English, the lonely bays and estu- 
aries saw strange ships from time to time. There was 
a pirate settlement by 1664 at Cape Fear River, where 
Governor Sayle did not arrive until 1670 to take 
formal possession for the Lords Proprietors of the 
colony. 

The Peace of Utrecht turned many privateers into 
pirates, ships which had been habitually preying 
upon Spanish commerce since Blake's victory at 
Santa Cruz in 1657, and these gentlemen of fortune 
were at first welcome in the Carolinas. Nearly all 
the coin in circulation then was at first brought by 
such doubtful adventurers, and they were regarded 
as the natural protectors of the Carolinas against 
their powerful enemy, the Spaniard, to the south. 

C1223 



Notes 

Gradually, however, this cordial attitude changed. 
It was a small step from attacking Spanish to plunder- 
ing English commerce, and with the cultivation and 
export of rice and indigo, the demand for a safe sea 
passage grew overwhelming, while the coasts con- 
tinued to be ravaged. The royal government was 
slow to act. In 1684 we learn that ''the governor will 
not in all probability always reside in Charles Town, 
which is so near the sea as to be in danger of sudden 
attack by pirates; " nor was this an idle thought, for 
the town was blockaded by pirate ships at the harbor's 
mouth, and medicines and supplies demanded while 
citizens were held as hostages. 

In 1 7 18 Governor Spotswood of Virginia sent an 
expedition to North Carolina, which succeeded in 
surprising, capturing, and beheading the notorious 
"Black Beard," who in company with one Stede 
Bonnet, had long ravaged the coast with impunity. 

In August of the same year word was brought to 
Charlestown that Bonnet with his ship the Royal 
James was refitting in the Cape Fear River. Colonel 
William Rhett volunteered to attack him. With 
two sloops of eight guns each, the Henry and the 
Nymph, and about 130 men in all, he set sail, and 
found Bonnet at anchor in the Cape Fear River. In 
making the attack, and during the encounter, all 
three ships ran aground. The fight raged desperately 
all day between the Henry and the Royal James, 

ni23 3 



Carolina Chansons 

the Nymph being unable to get off the shoal and 
come to the help of her companion ship. Bonnet 
finally surrendered and was taken prisoner to 
Charlestown. It is this adventure which the poem 
celebrates. 

Bonnet escaped, but was afterwards recaptured by 
Colonel Rhett on Sullivan's Island. He and about 
thirty of his crew were hanged about the corner of 
Meeting and Water Streets. Bonnet, himself, was 
hanged later than his crew, after a masterpiece of 
invective by the judge, who painted hell vividly. 
This pirate leader was dragged fainting to the gallows, 
and there was much sympathy for him, as it was 
said, "His humor of going a-pirating proceeded from 
a disorder of the mind . . . occasioned by some 
discomforts he found in the married state." 



NOTE ON '^THE SEEWEES OF SEEWEE BAY" 

The Seewee Indians, who lived on the shores of 
what is now known as Bull's Bay, S. C, but was 
formerly called Seewee Bay, became discontented 
with the small prices obtained from the white traders 
for pelts. Seeing the ships constantly coming ihto 
the Bay from England, they conceived the idea of 
building large canoes and reaching England over the 
ocean. Several huge canoes, larger than any hereto- 

C1243 



Notes 

fore built by Indians, were accordingly constructed; 
these were loaded with the proceeds of a season's 
hunting, and, manned by all the braves of the tribe, 
set out in the direction from which the ships came. 
A gale came up and the braves were never seen again. 
Their squaws gradually wandered off to other tribes. 
This event took place about 1696. 



NOTE ON LA FAYETTE 

To Accompany ''La Fayette Lands" 

The Marquis de la Fayette, under the name of 
Gilbert du Motier, sailed from Bordeaux on the 26th 
of March, 1777, accompanied by the Baron Kalb 
and several French Army Officers. On the 14th of 
June, 1777, he first landed in America on North 
Island in Winyah Bay, near Georgetown, S. C, and 
was received at the house of Major Huger. In a 
letter to his wife, written soon after his landing. La 
Fayette says, ''I first saw and judged of the life of 
the country at the house of a Major Huger." De- 
tailed accounts of La Fayette's landing and reception 
still exist. 



Ci^sn 



Carolina Chansons 

NOTE ON THEODOSIA BURR 
To Accompany ''The Priest and the Pirate" 

In 1801 Theodosia, daughter of Aaron Burr, Vice- 
President of the United States, naarried Joseph Alston 
of ''The Oaks," Hobcaw Barony, S. C. They had 
one son, Aaron Burr Alston, who died in 181 2, the 
same year that Joseph Alston was elected Governor 
of the State. On December 30th, 181 2, at the urgent 
solicitation of her father, who had just returned from 
Europe, and who awaited her eagerly in New York, 
Theodosia set sail from Georgetown, S. C, in the 
pilot-boat schooner, " Patriot. " Those on board were 
never seen again. 

The vessel, which was being fitted out as a privateer, 
was carrying dismounted guns under her deck, and 
may have foundered in the severe gale of January 
ist, 1813. 

In 1869, however, a Dr. W. C. Pool attended a 
fisher family at Naggs Head, Kittyhawk, N. C. In 
the fisherman's hut hung an oil painting of a beautiful 
woman, which had been taken from an abandoned 
pilot-built schooner that drifted onto the North 
Carolina coast in that vicinity in January, 18 13. No 
one was aboard and the vessel had evidently been 
looted. Ladies' clothes were found in great disorder 
in the cabin. 

n 126 3 



Notes 

There was also a story told by a dying sailor who 
confessed that he had seen the crew of such a boat 
walk the plank, and that among them was a beautiful 
woman who walked into the sea with a Bible or 
prayer-book in her hand. 

The painting is in the possession of the Burr- Alston 
connection, and is thought by them, on account of its 
striking family resemblance, to be a picture of Theo- 
dosia Burr. The painting story has often been 
scouted, but there is too much circumstantial evi- 
dence to ignore it in treating the legend. 



NOTE TO "THE LAST CREW 

The *^ Fish-Boat" of the Confederate Navy, which 
exhaustive research indicates to have been the first 
submarine vessel to sink an enemy ship in time of 
war, was designed by Horace L. Hundley in 1863. 
This boat was twenty feet long, three and one-half 
feet wide, and five feet deep. Her motive power 
consisted of eight men whose duty it was to turn the 
crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target 
had been reached. When this primitive craft was 
closed for diving there was only sufficient air to sup- 
port Kfe for half an hour. Since the torpedo was 
attached to the boat itself there was no chance of 
escape. The only hope was to reach and destroy the 



Carolina Chansons 

enemy vessel before the crew were suffocated or 
drowned. 

Five successive volunteer crews died without reach- 
ing their objectives. But the sixth crew was success- 
ful in sinking the Federal blockading ship " Housa- 
tonic, " their own craft being caught and crushed 
beneath the foundering vessel. These crews went to 
certain death in the night time, in such secrecy that 
it was often months before their own families knew 
the names of the men. And now, with the lapse of 
scarcely more than half a century, it has been possible 
to find the names of only sixteen of those who paid 
the price. 

Because no nation of any time can point to a more 
inspiring example of self-sacrifice, and because now, 
in a country reunited and indissoluble, the traditions 
of both the North and the South are a common, 
glorious heritage, the poem, which presents the final 
episode in the drama, is written as a memorial to all 
who gave their lives in the venture. 

D. H. 

NOTE ON POE 

To Accompany ''Edgar Allan Poe" and 
"Alchemy" 

In May, 1828, Poe enlisted in the army under the 
name of Edgar A. Perry, and was assigned to Battery 

1:1283 



Notes 

''H" of the First Artillery at Fort Independence. 
In October his battery was ordered to Fort Moultrie, 
Charleston, S. C, Poe spent a whole year on Sulli- 
van's Island. Professor C. Alphonso Smith, the well- 
known Poe authority, says, *'So far as I know, this 
was the only tropical background that Poe had ever 
seen." That the susceptible nature of the young 
poet was vastly impressed by the weirdness and 
melancholy scenery of the Carolina coast country, 
there can be very little doubt. The dank tarns and 
funereal woodlands of his landscapes, or at least the 
strong suggestion of them, may all be found here, and 
the scene of The Goldhug is definitely laid on Sullivan's 
Island. Here are dim family vaults, and tracts of 
country in which the House of Usher might well stand. 

*'Dim vales and shadowy floods 
And cloudy-looking woods 
Whose forms we can't discover, 
From the tears that drip all over" 

was written while Poe was in the army at Fort 
Moultrie, and appeared in his second volume in 1829. 
There are later echoes. 

"Around by lifting winds forgot 
Resignedly beneath the sky 
The melancholy waters lie. " 

H. A. 
C 129 3 



Carolina Chasons 



''MARSH TACKIES" 



''Marsh Tackles" is the name given by the negroes 
to the little, wild horses of the Carolina coast country's 
swamps and sea islands. Early traditions say that 
these horses were found by the EngHsh when they 
first came and that they are the descendants of run- 
aways from the Spanish settlements to the South 
about St. Augustine, or horses turned loose by De- 
Soto upon his ill-fated march to the Mississippi. 
These horses pick up a precarious Hving in out-of- 
the-way sections along the coast, and are occasionally 
taken and broken in by the negroes. They are the 
"poor horse trash " of the section. 



II130] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Alstons and AUstons of South Caro- 
lina S. C. Graves 

Annual Report of the Am. Hist. Ass 1913 

Aaron Burr, Memoirs, Life, and Letters. 

Charleston Courier Old Files 

Charleston Mercury Old Files 

Charleston the Place and the People Ravenel 

Colonial History of South Carolina Lawson 

Defense of Charleston Harbor Johnson 

Diary from Dixie Chestnut 

Edgar Allan Poe Woodbury 

Edgar Allan Poe, How to Know Him Smith 

Edgar Allen Poe Harrison 

Mobile Mercury Old Files 

Proceedings of the American Philos. 

Soc Vol. XXVI 

Pirates, The Carolina . . . Hughson, Johns Hopkins 

Press Pamphlet 

Submarines Pamphlet, Smythe, A. T., Jr. 

South Carolina Historical and Genea- 
logical Magazine Vol. XIV 

Theodosia Pidgin 

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